The mound measures around 21 metres north to south and nearly 25 metres east to west, rising only about 0.6 metres above the surrounding ground, its sides sloping so gently that it barely interrupts the flat landscape. The landowner has noted that it was ploughed over during land reclamation, which will have disturbed its upper layers, and a second, similar site is said to exist in the field to the west, though no trace of it is now visible and its exact position is unknown.

What survives at Cowbawn is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The term refers to a mound of heat-shattered stone that accumulated beside a trough or pit, usually cut into boggy or waterlogged ground. Water in the trough was brought to the boil by dropping fire-heated stones into it; those stones, once cracked and spent, were raked out and piled to the side, forming the distinctive horseshoe or oval mound that archaeologists recognise today. The location of the Cowbawn example is entirely characteristic: flat, low-lying ground, close to a bog edge, where water would have been readily available. The burnt-stone mound is all that remains visible above the surface, but the trough and any associated features may yet survive beneath the soil, assuming the ploughing did not reach them.